Hello to everyone. I'm registering with the forums primarily to lurk and also to ask some questions here and there.
I've thought about, pondered, read, and debated atheist/theist concerns and beliefs but have not really visited this topic in a long time. It took me a while to consciously embrace agnostic-atheism. I developed into those views when I was 18 but it had been a long time coming. It's not a primary identifier for me or anything, but it's my default position. I have my reasons for it, but I'm not particularly well versed in philosophy or arguments. That is something I'd like to change. I do describe myself as a pantheist usually because that captures my underlying mood and sense of relationship to the cosmos and other things about me. I don't tend to think about traditional theism much so I don't think about being an agnostic or atheist on a frequent basis, though I use those words if I do find myself having to clarify my beliefs or lack thereof on certain issues.
I suppose I'm agnostic-atheist because it seems like so many "paranormal" phenomena of interest to me so often have mundane (though often interesting) explanations, and social and cultural explanations for the development of religious doctrine and the Bible, both of which fascinate me, seem so much more reasonable and obvious than revelation-centered beliefs.
I have been conversing with a Catholic friend who also happens to be a philosopher and physicist. I don't quite know how to counter his arguments (mostly the Cosmological argument). I simply find it utterly unconvincing. I can't disprove his beliefs (there's my agnosticism speaking) but I find them faaar from "self-evident" despite my lack of philosophical training. Not being well versed in metaphysics or physics I don't really know what to say about his claim that most physicists believe the universe is not self-existent, although I don't find that a good argument either: that there must be a self-realizing absolute reality not dependent on anything else on which everything else depends for its being, or that causality necessarily applies to the entire cosmos in the way that it does to individual things within the cosmos. In fact his tone is sort of irritating me as are his pleas that I read his critique of pantheism (mostly an insistence on a particular definition of God that is by no means universal across religions and persons), but he is a good friend and I mostly enjoy our conversations. I hope to test some of his arguments against better informed atheists here and see what they make of them. Besides that I just want to sharpen up my ideas and logic.
Hello, hello again!
I've thought about, pondered, read, and debated atheist/theist concerns and beliefs but have not really visited this topic in a long time. It took me a while to consciously embrace agnostic-atheism. I developed into those views when I was 18 but it had been a long time coming. It's not a primary identifier for me or anything, but it's my default position. I have my reasons for it, but I'm not particularly well versed in philosophy or arguments. That is something I'd like to change. I do describe myself as a pantheist usually because that captures my underlying mood and sense of relationship to the cosmos and other things about me. I don't tend to think about traditional theism much so I don't think about being an agnostic or atheist on a frequent basis, though I use those words if I do find myself having to clarify my beliefs or lack thereof on certain issues.
I suppose I'm agnostic-atheist because it seems like so many "paranormal" phenomena of interest to me so often have mundane (though often interesting) explanations, and social and cultural explanations for the development of religious doctrine and the Bible, both of which fascinate me, seem so much more reasonable and obvious than revelation-centered beliefs.
I have been conversing with a Catholic friend who also happens to be a philosopher and physicist. I don't quite know how to counter his arguments (mostly the Cosmological argument). I simply find it utterly unconvincing. I can't disprove his beliefs (there's my agnosticism speaking) but I find them faaar from "self-evident" despite my lack of philosophical training. Not being well versed in metaphysics or physics I don't really know what to say about his claim that most physicists believe the universe is not self-existent, although I don't find that a good argument either: that there must be a self-realizing absolute reality not dependent on anything else on which everything else depends for its being, or that causality necessarily applies to the entire cosmos in the way that it does to individual things within the cosmos. In fact his tone is sort of irritating me as are his pleas that I read his critique of pantheism (mostly an insistence on a particular definition of God that is by no means universal across religions and persons), but he is a good friend and I mostly enjoy our conversations. I hope to test some of his arguments against better informed atheists here and see what they make of them. Besides that I just want to sharpen up my ideas and logic.
Hello, hello again!
